Personally, I tend to parse them as “Look how cynical and worldly-wise I am, how able I am to see through people’s pretences to their ugly true motivations. Aren’t I clever and edgy?”.
I am aware that this is not very charitable of me.
In more charitable mood, I interpret these statements roughly as Lumifer does: Hanson is making claims about why (deep enough down) people do what they do.
I don’t think that’s the best non charitable version.
More accurate: “Hanson profits from memes that are associated with him spreading. That’s his job as a public intellectual. Therefore he does everything to make them spread and win. He optimizes for winning.”
Personally, I tend to parse them as “Look how cynical and worldly-wise I am, how able I am to see through people’s pretences to their ugly true motivations. Aren’t I clever and edgy?”.
That’s exactly how Hanson sounds to me, and why I tend to read his blog less often now.
Both of those could be true: if “deep down” people have motivations like that, it may be that deep down Hanson has that kind of motivation for making such observations.
This is an example of why I’m curious about everyone else’s parsing. I bet Robin Hanson does talk about status in the pursuit of status, however I bet he also enjoys going around examining social phenomenon in terms of status and that he is quite often on to something. These aren’t mutually exclusive. People may have an original reason for doing something, but they may have multiple reasons that develop over time and their most strongly motivating reason can change.
Personally, I tend to parse them as “Look how cynical and worldly-wise I am, how able I am to see through people’s pretences to their ugly true motivations. Aren’t I clever and edgy?”.
I am aware that this is not very charitable of me.
In more charitable mood, I interpret these statements roughly as Lumifer does: Hanson is making claims about why (deep enough down) people do what they do.
I don’t think that’s the best non charitable version.
More accurate: “Hanson profits from memes that are associated with him spreading. That’s his job as a public intellectual. Therefore he does everything to make them spread and win. He optimizes for winning.”
That’s exactly how Hanson sounds to me, and why I tend to read his blog less often now.
Overcoming Bias is not about overcoming bias.
Both of those could be true: if “deep down” people have motivations like that, it may be that deep down Hanson has that kind of motivation for making such observations.
This is an example of why I’m curious about everyone else’s parsing. I bet Robin Hanson does talk about status in the pursuit of status, however I bet he also enjoys going around examining social phenomenon in terms of status and that he is quite often on to something. These aren’t mutually exclusive. People may have an original reason for doing something, but they may have multiple reasons that develop over time and their most strongly motivating reason can change.